Annual Report 2005

Capacity Building Programme GRID-Arendal’s Capacity Building Programme undertakes a wide range of activities aimed at build- ing awareness and increasing capacity to integrate environmental considerations into decisions on development as well as land and resource management, particularly in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. These include training workshops in environmental journalism and state-of-environment reporting, the establishment of information centres, and the development of training tools for environmental assessments and reporting. enrin.grida.no

The electronic version of the Popular report “State of the En- vironment of the Republic of Belarus” (ww.nd.minpriroda. by) was launched. Publications in 2005: Mining for Closure – Policies and guidelines for sustain- able mining practice and closure of mine. The book was designed to present a basis for action within South East- ern Europe (SEE) and within the Tisza River Basin (TRB) towards the development of corporate practice, regula- tory frameworks, governance guidelines and/or financial and insurance markets suitable for the support of a mod- ern mining industry. (www.grida.no/products.cfm) Issue No. 4 of Environment and Poverty Times features articles and graphics related to environment, achieving the millennium development goals (MDGs) and govern- ance. (www.environmenttimes.net) Impact II Telling good stories: We have the message but how to communicate it using the right messengers. A col- lection of practices and lessons. This report was a follow- up to GRID-Arendal’s Occasional Paper in 2001 focusing on the impact of environmental information. Environment and Security: Transforming risks into co- operation - Central Asia - Ferghana / Osh / Khujand area presents an in-depth assessment of the environmental and security situation in the Ferghana Valley, Central Asia. The Millennium Assessment Synthesis Reports , describ- ing the continuous degradation of the ecosystem, includ- ed a collection of graphics produced by GRID-Arendal’s cartographic team. Vital Climate Change Graphics . This collection of graph- ics was based on the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was published in 2001. Available in print, on CD- ROM and online (vitalgraphics.net). Vital Climate Graphics Latin America and the Carib- bean , a collection of graphics highlighting greenhouse gas emission trends, observational evidence, and pro- jected impacts of warming and adverse weather events in the region, was published. Available on CD-ROM and online (vitalgraphics.net) in both English and Spanish editions. Issue No. 3 of Environment & Poverty Times was prepared for the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan. It features a collection of articles covering a wide range of disaster-related issues ranging from prevention, early warning and preparedness to relief and reconstruc- tion. (www.environmenttimes.net) • • • • • • • •

GRID-Arendal’s Capacity Building Programme works to: Further develop and utilize core competencies within the- matic areas relating to environment and poverty, environ- ment and security and urban environmental issues; Further develop capacity building methodologies/tools for environmental reporting and for measuring its impact; Basedon scientific data, communicate environmental infor- mation through innovative visual (carto)graphic reporting. • • •

Highlights from 2005

Within the Environment and Security (ENVSEC) initiative, jointly implemented by UNEP, OSCE and UNDP, GRID-Aren- dal remains the assessment engine with innovative, participa- tory and highly commuicative assessments on the linkages of environment and security being conducted and published for Central Asia, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Media/journalist workshops were held in Tbilisi, Georgia, Baku, Azerbaijan, Tirana, Albania and Arendal, Norway. An ‘Environmental information management and reporting workshop’ was held in Budapest, Hungary. The opening of three environment information centres was managed and executed by GRID-Arendal within the frame- work of the project “Increasing the Impact of Environmental Information in the Northwest Russia”: the Arkhangelsk En- vironmental Information Centre, the Environmental Infor- mation Centre for St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast, and the Pskov Environmental Information Centre.

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